Shirley Poppy II – a painting a day

Sold and on its way to Austria! size 7 in x 6 in 18cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper

What a strange business, I was trying to help my son and his friend with their Geography revision. It seems that of the six questions on the exam paper they have only been taught enough in class to answer three, so if they get a particularly nasty question they are forced to answer it because they won’t have covered the alternative topic. For example they have learnt about rivers but not about volcanoes, they have covered Agriculture but not Development. Call me old-fashioned (no not all at once) but if someone has a GCSE in Geography I would expect them to know a bit about volcanoes. A knowledge of Development meshes with a knowledge of Agriculture; each informs the other.

I had a better session today painting the same poppy which had not dropped its petals; when the weather is hot these poppies barely last a day. It reminds me of the wall paper my grandparents had in their bedroom, which was lush with poppies, there were stripes in the design in a bluish grey and like almost everything in their house, I loved it.

I also made five jars of strawberry jam. My grandmother would have been proud of me (actually she would have quietly approved, she was not given to hyperbole)

I am dissatisfied with the look of yesterdays picture and will re-crop it tomorrow.